1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique for assigning labels to a plurality of images.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, many images have been photographed by photographing devices such as digital still cameras and mobile telephones equipped with cameras. The images photographed by such devices are often stored on and managed by personal computers, and are displayed on display devices or printed by printers. The increased capacity of recording media such as hard disks has led to the storage of hundreds, even thousands, of images on personal computers. It is extremely cumbersome for users to search for the desired image among such an abundance of images in order to print or display them. Image management methods have been proposed, in which labels that serve as cues (such as labels indicating the category of the image contents) during such searches are pre-assigned to allow images to be searched based on such labels (see JP2005-18734A).
When a label is pre-assigned to an image in the manner noted above, the user, for example, decides whether or not to assign a label while checking the images one by one, and if several types of labels can be assigned, it is necessary to decide which type of label to assign, which is extremely tedious.